Cornel West Quotes

Men do not make history according to their own free will. But they make history nonetheless.

The enemy is the system. And the system is made up of people, and we have a choice in that.

We live in a society that blames everybody else for what's wrong.

What influences our behavior, and what our level of responsibility is, are very complex issues. And anytime we try to make this simplistic, we don't serve people well.

There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.

Since we own our bodies, we also inevitably own the effects of our actions, be they good or bad. If we own the effects of our actions, then clearly we own that which we produce, whether what we produce is a bow, or a book - or a murder.

We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible.

If the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought.

The European model is in danger if we obliterate the principle of personal responsibility.

We're all about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, et cetera - I think that's a harmful mythology, that the choices that we make and the things that we do in our lives are not connected to anything else. So I'd like to help to debunk that.

Just as we demand that people take responsibility for their actions, we as a society must take responsibility for fighting injustice.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

If every man could act as he chose, the whole of history would be a tissue of disconnected accidents.

I believe we're responsible for everything that happens to us.

It is important to act as if bearing witness matters.

Beings are owners of their action, heirs of their action.

Once we see an aspect of what we or someone else does as something that happens, we lose our grip on the idea that it has been done and that we can judge the doer and not just the happening.

Actions have consequences. Ignorance about the nature of those actions does not free a person from responsibility for the consequences. (28)

Kafka had the sense of guilt. I don't think I have because I don't believe in free will. Because what I have done has been done, well, for me or through me. But I haven't done it really. But I don't believe in free will, I can't feel guilty.

Stuff Happens.’ That’s the G-rated version. That’s a bumper sticker that only a straight white upper middle class male could have made. Because anyone who isn’t straight, anyone who isn’t male, anyone who isn’t white, anyone who isn’t upper middle class knows that stuff doesn’t just happen. Stuff gets done by people to people. Nothing is a coincidence. Nothing is random. This isn’t osmosis. And so we act as if it’s this passive thing, but yet that’s not the case.

Of course I believe in free will. Do we have a choice?

You deicde, and you make our night what you want. Brilliant and ours. Stupid and theirs.

Our virtues are voluntary (and in fact we are in a sense ourselves partly the cause of our moral dispositions, and it is our having a certain character that makes us set up an end of a certain kind), it follows that our vices are voluntary also; they are voluntary in the same manner as our virtues.

You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions.

Duty is ours; consequences are God's.